"We will deliver an irreparable blow to Italy", the threat of the group's pro-Russian hackers killnet. After having attacked in recent days the Senate, the Ministry of Defense, the Police, the CSM), companies and airports and the Eurovision platform (failed ed), now the threat appears more extensive and would tend to block the IT structure of the whole country.
In the afternoon CSIRT Italy, the National Cybersecurity Agency Incident Response Team, has issued an alert, highlighting how they continue "to detect signs and threats of possible imminent attacks against, in particular, national public entities, private entities that provide a public utility service or private entities whose image is identified with the country Italy".
The recommendation is to "implement with immediate effect"The"actions to mitigate vulnerabilities" and from "keep a close eye on IT infrastructures h24".
In a chat on Telegram Killnet posted a message first: "May 30 at 05:00 the meeting point is Italy! ”. Subsequently, with the usual ironic tone, he added: "I have always been interested in one question: does Russia generally support our activities? Since we will make an irreparable blow in Italy due to the war with Anonymous. Will we at least be remembered in our native land? ".
The reference is to the attack of Anonymous who in recent days had made the pro-Russian website inaccessiblekillnet.ru', declaring war on' rival 'hackers. "We called Fake Anonymous on the battlefield in Italy if they can't stop us as promised“, The response from Killnet, who received on the same chat on Legion support, affiliated group. "Get ready', wrote the latter with the emoticon of fire. The attacks recorded in the past weeks have been of the Ddos (Distributed denial of service) type.
The undersecretary Franco Gabrielli, Authority delegated to the security of the Republic, in recent days has called for no alarmism: "you don't need a hysterical attitude. If every time there is a 'Dos' attack we think that the country is the 'merchandise' of foreign powers, we do not understand the level of threat". Moreover, the 'Dos', specified the National Cybersecurity Agency, "they do not affect the integrity and confidentiality of the information and systems affected unlike, for example, a ransomware-type attack".
But, with the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine, there is a fear of a qualitative leap in the cyber campaign, which sees the Russians among the actors in the front line, in the context of a 'hybrid' offensive that has been under the attention for some time. intelligence. And if the actions of groups like Killnet are more propaganda and demonstrative than anything else, the future could hold more far-reaching hostile attempts.
It is no coincidence that on 13 May the Agency invited the most exposed operators, including managers of critical infrastructures, to raise their telematic defenses against the risk of intrusions by urgently solving 71 vulnerabilities that are used by hackers in their modus operandi. More than Killnet, therefore, the concern of the security apparatuses is aimed at a possible escalation of the offensive which could find many key systems for the security of the State unprepared.
Last Wednesday Gabrielli and the director of the Agency, Roberto Baldoni, presented the National Cybersecurity Strategy 2022-2026, a path to increase the resilience of public administration and businesses, making up for the delay accumulated compared to other countries such as France and Germany.